“I say, Jack, there’s a chap coming to the camp tonight to talk. Shall we go and hear him?” The speaker was a young soldier, and the camp in question was in so secluded a spot that any fresh face was hailed with delight. “Oh, yes! I’ve heard about him,” responded Jack Winter. “They say he can preach in seven languages. He’d be worth seeing anyway.” Others seemed to think so too, for the hut was well filled when the evangelist, a Scotsman, rose to speak.
“I want to tell you a true story,” he said. “A friend of mine was in South Africa for a spell. One day, when in. Cape Town, he went to call on a lady he knew, and he was shown into the drawing room, in the further corner of which was a parrot with a beautiful red breast. My friend happened to have in his pocket a piece of red glass, and he took it out and looked at the parrot through it. To his astonishment the parrot’s breast looked white! ‘That’s strange,’ he thought, and began to try the experiment upon other red objects in the room, finding that each one looked white when seen through the piece of red glass, Then he told me there flashed into his mind the meaning of that wonderful verse.(Isa. 1:1818Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18)), ‘Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though you sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’
“Men,” said the evangelist, “scarlet and crimson are double-dyed colors. A piece of scarlet cloth is dyed as thread, and dyed again after it is woven. You can never get the color out of scarlet material. God says, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet’—double-dyed— ‘they shall be as white as snow.’ How is that possible? Only in one way. Come and put yourself, as it were, under that precious blood of Jesus shed for you, and when God looks upon you through that red blood He will see you ‘as white as snow.’ There is no other way in which a guilty sinner can appear ‘white’ in the sight of a holy God. How wonderful that the holy God should be willing to reason gently, lovingly, with us guilty sinners! There is only one explanation of it—God is love. Don’t turn your backs on a God of love. Come now to Him.”
“I don’t think that I shall ever forget that story of the red glass,” remarked Jack Winter to a friend afterward. Better still, he did more than remember the story. He received the invitation of love, and sheltered under the precious blood. He came to see me in London the other day, his face just beaming with joy. Now he is spending his spare time in passing on the glad message of salvation to others. He is back in his old job in London, but as “a new creature” in Christ Jesus. On Sundays he may be seen helping in an open-air service held in his street, where everyone knows. him. “It’s not easy,” remarked jack, “but it is well worth doing.” It is splendid to think of the many witnesses Jesus Christ has in the big city of London, among the business men. They are business men right enough, but they are Christian business men.
“I say, Daniels,” said one business man to another the other day, “I know you are a religious chap. Can you tell me how a fellow can be saved? I went to your church thinking the preacher might say something on the subject, but he didn’t. Can you?” Mr. Daniels did the best thing anyone could do. He replied in the very words of the old Book itself: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” Nearly two thousand Years ago a Philippian gaoler asked the same question of his prisoners, Paul and Silas. And this reply which he received from them is just as true today. To “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ”—that is, to receive Him as one’s personal Saviour—is to be “saved.”
“What France needs most,” said a famous French statesman recently, “is forty million Christians.” Yes, and England needs them too! Will you make one of them. A real live Christian! A band of Christian soldiers in Egypt have been doing a splendid work for God lately among their comrades, of whom numbers have been truly converted to God. “I think God has sent me here to learn how to become a live Christian,” remarked a young officer of the R.A.F. to the leader of this “live” band. A live Christian “is one who is filled with the Holy Spirit, and whose life, in consequence, will tell and count and weigh for Jesus Christ seven days a week.” E. E. HATCHHELL.